did not come across mud flats, but it
came through a thousand miles of dark green foliage, the leaves
rippling like the waters of the sea.

"The woods fur me," said Shif'less Sol, speaking in a whisper, with
instinctive caution. "I like 'em, even when they're full o' warriors
lookin' fur my scalp."

The forest here was very dense, and also was heavy with undergrowth
which suited their purpose, as they would be able to approach the
hollow, unseen and unheard. Henry still did not like the presence of the
smaller column of smoke, and when he reached the crest of their first
hill he saw that it was yet rising.

"You had a sign last night, and it was a good one," he said to Shif'less
Sol, "but I see one now, and I think it is a bad one."

"We'll go on an' find it."

They approached the hollow rapidly, the forest everywhere being
extremely dense, but when they were within less than a mile of it both
stopped short and looked at each other.

"You heard it?" said Henry.

"Yes, I heard it."

"It wasn't much louder than the dropping of an acorn, but it was a rifle
shot."

"O' course it wuz a rifle shot. Neither you nor I could be mistook about
that."

"And you noticed where it came from?"

"Straight from the place where Paul and Tom and Long Jim Hart are."

"Which may mean that their presence has been discovered and that they
are besieged."

"That's the way I look at it."

"And we must make a rescue."

"That's true, an' we've got to be so mighty keerful about it that we
ain't took an' scalped and burned by the savages, afore we've had a
single chance at makin' a rescue."

The thought in the minds of the two was the same. They were sure now
from the absence of the larger smoke column that the main force had gone
south, but that the smaller had remained to take their comrades, whose
presence, by some chance, they had discovered. They lay closely hidden
for a while, and they heard the report of a second shot, followed by a
mere shred of sound which they took to be an Indian yell, although they
were not sure.

"Ef the boys are besieged, an' we think they are," said the shiftless
one, "they kin hold out quite a while even without our help. So I think,
Henry, we'd better go an' see whether the main camp has broke up an' the
cannon gone south. It won't be so hard to find out that, an' then we kin
tell better what we want to do."

"You're right, of course," replied Henry. "We'll have to leave our
comrades for the